From TV screen to movie screen

Florence Henderson, Robert Reed and the rest of the cast of "The Brady Bunch." It's just one of many TV series that were translated over the years to bigger-budgeted feature films - whether as an expansion of the TV show's world, a re-imagining of the characters, or as blatant parody.

Credit: AP/Graphicsbank

"The Brady Bunch Movie" was a tongue-in-cheek comedy that parodied the TV show's '70s sensibility - not to mention '70s fashions and hair styles.

Credit: Paramount Pictures

The covert operatives of "Mission: Impossible" brought high-tech spyware to new highs, from spray-on masks to robotics, as the IM Force ruined the plans of dictators and evil scientists, often in locales with vaguely-Slavic signposts.

Led by Peter Graves (top, who replaced the first season's team leader), the cast included (clockwise) Martin Landau, Greg Morris, Peter Lupus and Barbara Bain. Later seasons featured in the cast Leonard Nimoy, Lesley Ann Warren, and Lynda Day George.

Credit: CBS

Tom Cruise brought the IM Force back into circulation with four big-screen adventures, including 2012's "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol."

Credit: Paramount Pictures

One of the most enduring '60s sitcoms was "Bewitched," about a suburban housewife who dabbled in magic (to the chagrin of her husband). Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York starred as Samantha and Darrin Stevens, along with Agnes Moorhead as Samantha's mother Endora. The show ran for eight years, during which Samantha not only had kids, but also a different husband (when Dick Sargent took over York's role).

Credit: Screen Gems

In Nora Ephron's movie reinterpretation of "Bewitched" (2005), Will Ferrell stars as the lead actor in a new TV series based on the sitcom "Bewitched," unaware that his co-star (played by Nicole Kidman) is a REAL witch. Shirley MacLaine played Iris/Endora.

Credit: Columbia PIctures

"The Addams Family" (1964-1966), inspired by Charles Addams' macabre cartoons, starred John Aston as Gomez, Caroline Jones as Morticia, Jackie Coogan as Uncle Fester, Ted Cassidy as Lurch the butler, Marie Blake as Grandmama, and as the children Lisa Loring (Wednesday) and Ken Weatherwax (Pugsley).

Cassidy also did double-duty playing the disembodied hand, Thing (which appeared as both a left or a right hand).

Often times producers try to capitalize on the popularity of a TV show by rounding up the cast for a big-screen version. Many series have been blown up for the movies this way, including "Dragnet," "Batman," and "The Munsters," which offered the advantage of displaying Fred Gwynne's makeup in color.

Credit: Universal Pictures

"Extraordinary crimes against the people, and the state, have to be avenged by agents extraordinary.

One of Britain's top exports in the 1960s was the spy series "The Avengers," starring Patrick Macnee as dapper English agent John Steed. He was accompanied at turns by Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale (left); Diana Rigg as Emma Peel (center); and Linda Thorson as Tara King.

The show was revived in the mid-seventies, but in 1998 a movie version starring Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman in the roles of Steed and Mrs. Peel fell flat.

Credit: ABC Television

Don Adams with his trusty shoe-phone as secret agent Maxwell Smart in the comedy series "Get Smart." Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the show ran for five years on NBC and CBS and then in syndication, before spinning off a feature film, "The Nude Bomb." The show was later rebooted as a feature film starring Steve Carell.

Credit: NBC

"Exterminate! Exterminate!"

In addition to bigger budgets, movies can extend the reach of a TV show to a wider audience. "Doctor Who," the British sci-fi cult series, hadn't gotten much play outside the U.K., until Peter Cushing took on the title role for two feature films: "Dr. Who and the Daleks" (1965), and "Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D." (1966).

Credit: Continental Distributing

Perhaps the greatest TV-to-movies story is that "Star Trek," which ran for three years on NBC before low ratings killed it off in 1969. But it didn't stay dead: Fans made the show even more popular in its syndication run, and while the studio entertained ways to bring the show back to TV, "Star Wars" happened - making science fiction a very hot movie property.

Credit: Getty Images

The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise returned in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (1979), just the first of a long series of films featuring Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and the other immortals. The films' success proved a two-way street: the movies' increased popularity prompted new TV series spin-offs, including "Star Trek: The Next Generations," which itself was spun off into several feature films.

Credit: Paramoutn Pictures

Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto starred as James Kirk and Mr. Spock in the 2009 "Star Trek" reboot.

Credit: Paramount Pictures

Rod Serling's anthology series "The Twilight Zone" (1959-1964) had a healthy after-life in reruns, and inspired a Steven Spielberg-produced 1983 anthology film. "Twilight Zone: The Movie"'s most memorable stories were "It's a Good Life" (center), directed by Joe Dante; and "Nightmare at 20,000 feet" (right), directed by George Miller. It was during filming of the segment starring Vic Morrow (left) that an accident involving a helicopter killed Morrow and two child actors. Director John Landis and several crew members were tried and acquitted on manslaughter charges.

Credit: Warner Brothers

The cast of the 1970s TV adventure series "Charlie's Angels": Jaclyn Smith, Farrah Fawcett and Kate Jackson played three comely private investigators who take orders from a never-seen employer.

Credit: ABC

Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu in the film version "Charlie's Angels" (2000).

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo Tubbs and Don Johnson as "Sonny" Crocket, South Florida undercover cops in Michael Mann's "Miami Vice" (1984-1989). Its visual flare, editing and wardrobe influenced television for years to come.

Credit: AP

In 2006, Michael Mann directed a feature film version of "Miami Vice," starring Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell.

Credit: AP Photo/Universal Pictures

In 1972, Victor Lownes, the owner of the Playboy Club in London, offered the Monty Python group funding for a feature film comprised of skits from "Monty Python's Flying Circus," convinced that a movie version playing the U.S. college circuit would be a success.

Instead, "And Now for Something Complete Different" bombed in the U.S. - the movie company didn't know how to sell a film in which lumberjacks sang of the joys of dressing up as ladies. Yet the film was a resounding success among Brits, who didn't mind paying for movie tickets to see sketches they'd already seen on the BBC, for free!

Credit: Python (Monty) Pictures/Columbia

A movie adapted from a game show? Yes, and "The Gong Show Movie" (1980), starring Chuck Barris, was as chaotic as its small-screen origin.

Credit: Universal Pictures

Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum in a scene from "21 Jump Street" (2012), an update of the TV series about undercover cops that launched Johnny Depp to fame.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Robert Stack (right) starred as G-Man Elliot Ness in "The Untouchables."

The 1960s series "The Fugitive" starred David Janssen as a man wrongly convicted of murder, who escapes and spends the entire series in pursuit of the real killer - the One-Armed Man - while dodging the law himself. The series finale in which he finally confronts the killer was the highest-rated TV episode up to that time.

Harrison Ford starred in the feature film "The Fugitive" (1993), directed by Andrew Davis. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and earned Tommy Lee Jones a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Credit: Warner Brothers

David Lynch, the director of such singular films as "Eraserhead" and "Blue Velvet," turned TV drama upside-down with his series "Twin Peaks" (1990-91), about the underbelly of a Northwestern town shaken by the murder of high school student Laura Palmer. The show was a sensation for its compelling and unusual characters, striking visual flair and moody music, but the strands of plotlines and character arcs got so twisted audiences drifted away and it was cancelled after its second season - leaving much of the ever-widening mystery mostly unsolved.

Credit: Amazon.com

In 1992 Lynch directed a theatrical prequel, "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me," with much of the same cast, including Kyle MacLachlan and Sheryl Lee reprising their roles as FBI Agent Dale Cooper and Laura Palmer.

Credit: New Line Cinema

Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny starred as special government agents investigating a particularly sinister conspiracy in "The X Files" and its spinoff feature films.

Credit: 20th Century Fox

The 1990s MTV anime series "Aeon Flux" featured a scantily-clad assassin in a dystopian future.

Credit: MTV

Charlize Theron as the flesh-and-blood heroine of "Aeon Flux" (2005).

Credit: PARAMOUNT PICTURES

The team responsible for "Airplane!" were also to blame for the riotous TV show "Police Squad!" (1982) which parodied every cop show convention imaginable. Unfortunately, its sight gags and word play didn't have time to find an audience - ABC canceled the show after four episodes had aired because, as one executive amazingly explained, "the viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it."

But star Leslie Neilsen recreated the role of Detective Frank Drebin in the film "The Naked Gun" (1988), which itself spawned a number of similarly goofy sequels.

Credit: Paramount Pictures

"S.W.A.T." rolled out in the early '70s, one of the period's iconic cop shows with a hit theme song by Rhythm Heritage. Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Farrell starred in the 2003 big screen version of "S.W.A.T."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

The REAL star of "The Dukes of Hazzard" - The General Lee - goes airborne in the big-screen version of the TV series.

Credit: Warner Bros.

Joss Whedon's funky TV space-western "Firefly" was a short-lived 2002 series, but its characters were resuscitated for the 2005 film "Serenity," which continued the adventures of the titular spaceship's motley crew trying to scrape a living in the backwaters of the galaxy.

Credit: 20th Century Fox

The HBO series "Sex and the City" made the jump from pay-cable to movie screen in 2008 with stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall and Cynthia Nixon. Another sequel followed in 2010.

Credit: Warner Bros.

Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley, Liam Neeson and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson starred as mercenaries in "The A-Team," based on the '80s TV series that starred George Peppard and Mr T.